Chapter 25
Chayse took the steaming cup of kala offered by this short, curious man. “Would your friend like a cup?” he asked, gesturing toward Mek.
“Does that count as a question?” Chayse tried to keep his frustration from leaking into his voice.
“No more than that does.” Marley’s brow arched, and Chayse shifted, uncomfortable under this man’s piercing gaze.
“Nay, Mek will scout out from here, he is not comfortable in the open like this to sleep.”
Marley nodded, glancing at Mek before turning back, his face filled with curiosity. “Take your cup and walk out with me a bit,” he said, pushing himself off his log perch with a grunt. “Firelight will blind us to what lurks in the dark and I’m on first watch.”
Chayse sat his cup to the side and banked the fire, pondering just whose camp it was. Then, brushing his hands together, he glanced up at a sky full of stars and wondered if this was truly the man Niun felt could help him most. After a deep breath and a silent curse aimed at the Fates, he grinned and said, “I doubt there be two watches left if we’re to get an early start. Mek will complete the night. He is already headed out.”
Marley chuckled and topped off his drink before sitting back down. “I’m thinking I’ll not be the one to nay say Mek if that is what he wants.”
Chayse picked his cup back up, unsure of where he wanted the conversation to go. Still, the more he thought about it, he knew he owed it to Niun to put his misgivings aside and let this play out. Settled in his decision, he tipped his cup slightly toward the runesmith. “I believe you were about to tell me why you and the dragonkin feel such aversion toward the Tavir Academy.”
“So I was, so I was,” Marley said, his voice dropping as though smothered in thought. “Believe I can answer a lot of your questions all at once.” He sipped his kala. “Until about fifteen years ago, most of those at the Tavir Academy of Sedd, both weavers and pure scholars, were a decent sort, dedicated to the practice, perfection and passing on of their craft. Of which I was one.
The change came when Lord Norfall, one of Sedd’s court confidants, became head preceptor. They started taking only applicants with pure human lineage. Norfall stated the patronage of Sedd depended on the Academy’s ability to enlist and train more humans. He said training the Espaire undermined the purity of the Tavir.
Soon those with any of the blood of the ancients that lived, worked or studied at the Academy disappeared. One here, a family there, then a scholar or a teacher. Fear of just disappearing drove the rest of the Espaire residents to flee. I stayed, facilitating things from the inside and when I knew those friends of mine, both Espaire and human, were safe, I gathered what I needed and left a few surprises behind.”
With a shrug, he finished his kala and tipped his cup toward Chayse. “Now, enough of me, who is this Tavir-weaver you seek?”
Chayse sighed, trying to reconcile the Academy he imagined with what this man of many faces told him. He wasn’t sure how much trust he could place in him, even if Marley Stonebender answered all his questions right. Comforted that he hadn’t committed himself to anything, he took a swallow of his cooling kala and spoke.
“Do you know the name of Mikel Ulitson?”
Marley almost toppled from his seat, unprepared for his question. He stood and paced to the banked fire, holding his hands out for the fading warmth. “Well, and well,” he said, turning back to Chayse. “I believe you answered my question with yours. I know that name and the one he used when he left the Academy…”
Flustered, Chayse wondered if every answer he got from Marley Stonebender would involve a story, or a song, or a life lesson before you got to the simple answer. “Out with it then, so I know I’m not being taken for an addlepated dolt,” he blurted out, cutting Marley off.
The runesmith grinned. “I see he gave you a scholar’s vocabulary, either by design or from imitation, but do you have the wit and intellect to do anything with it? I knew Mikel just as well by the name Niun, an apothecary from the Bitterun Coast. Somewhat of a pirate past, if I remember right, but even he could never have guessed what came to the Academy a few years after he left. Why did he want you to find me?”
A bard was a good calling for one with such a mouth full of words, Chayse decided as he listened to this squat man’s long-winded answer. Marley looked nothing like he’d imagined him. His only remarkable feature, Chayse felt, was the scar in the center of his forehead. That and his ability to turn an answer to a question into a tale for evening entertainment.
His foster ma would’ve said the Fates once more rolled the bones. He sighed, glanced at the treeline where Mek had disappeared into the dark, then back at the dragonkin sleeping about the fire and drew from his pack the sealed scroll Niun gave him. He had a feeling Fayln was right.
“I believe this is for you.”
Marley stood at the fire, tapping the scroll on his fingers, his eyes boring into Chayse’s skull. “Do you know what it says?”
Chayse nodded. Although he hadn’t read it, Niun’s words implied as much. “He hoped you would mentor me, much as you did him.”
The runesmith sighed. “We are in a different time and a much different circumstance,” He snapped the seal on the scroll and unrolled it. His eyes scanned down the page for a moment before he re-rolled it and stuffed it in his pack. “Let’s sleep on it and see what the morning brings.”
With a nod, Chayse gathered his cloak and settled beneath the tree where Mek sat earlier. “At first light then.”
Crouched behind a wild tangle of brush with Marley, Chayse peered between buds and leaves at a camp in the upheaval of moving. Marley touched his shoulder, his mouth twisted as if he had eaten something bitter, his brow raised in askance.
Chayse shook his head. He shrugged, his hands spread in bewilderment. The last time he saw the camp, it only comprised six or seven nilmorg. Now the camp bristled with a score of battle-ready nilmorg, a pack of rsakmorg handlers, and three dark-cloaked humankind on horseback. Cautiously, they crept back to where Mek and the dragonkin waited.
“Looks to be a few more than an advanced scout party,” Marley said as they all retreated to a less exposed location.
“They apparently met up with those they awaited,” Chayse said with a tip of his head to Glyf.
“There’s nothing we can do about a force that size, especially with at least three Tavir-weavers directing them.”
“So the cloaked riders are from the academy?”
“Indeed, the emblem on the cloak is the Wista-Nem, with the flows of Tavir streaming from the branches. Stylized, to be sure, but not far from the truth.”
“Does everyone at the academy follow this Norfall character?” Chayse asked “Most, although we have heard some resistance bubbles from within. Not all humans are prejudiced against the other races, but it just takes the right persons, human, elemental or espaire in the right places to usher in an era of hatred and mistrust. Trying to sort through who is and
who is not aligned with the cult, Norfall or his masters could be a deadly initiation into academy politics,” Marley speculated, scratching his beard, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Let us hope we are in and out before politics become an issue. I am sure any politics we might come across will be at the end of a painful weaving and a drawn weapon,” Jayf said, coming round to join the conversation. “We should not be drawing upon tomorrow’s troubles when the present has so many sharp, pointy things around us. So, back to the present. Can you tell which way the band is headed?”
“If I was a betting man, I would bet on them heading the same way we are headed.” Marley looked back toward the dismantled camp.
“But you are a betting man, Marley, so what are we going to do?” Jayf asked.
The runesmith scowled and pulled at his beard. “As much as I would like to harry and bedevil the band unto their deaths, we have a mission that requires our speed and stealth.”
“Mission, what mission. Mek and I aren’t on a mission. We finished ours when we delivered those scrolls,” Chayse sputtered, looking between the dragonkin and Marley.
Marley turned to stare at him. “You are absolutely right. I and the dragonkin will continue north on our quest. You are welcome to join us until we decide just what Niun suggested in his missive and if I can help.” The runesmith’s brows pinch into a frown as he studied him. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Or not, the choice is yours, son, your choice, your destiny.”
Chayse listened to Marley and the dragonkin talk quietly. His mind filled with half-planned strategies and likely routes north as they journeyed back toward the bluff, where they’d spent the night.
“What about a boat, then?” Thysl chimed in, his excited voice rising above a whisper.
The group turned as one, waiting for him to continue. Thysl cleared his throat and said, “They did not torch those docked in the bay. I cannot see them razing a smaller private dock in an out-of-the-way cove. I know just such a cove and just such a boat.”
Marley frowned, but nodded at the same time. “Hefldeep’s sloop? Are we enough to sail ‘er even as a skeleton crew?”
“Ordinarily no, but I am a Windsinger and Aunt Hefldeep has not lived as long as she has without always planning for one desperate day.”
As the bluff came into sight, Chayse slowed, signaling to Mek. The others pulled ahead, engrossed with their plans, while he used the moment to communicate with his big friend. Then, with Mek’s agreement, they returned to the group.
Chayse could hardly believe he was saying it, but as he listened to them banter and talk back and forth he knew he wanted to belong to something, doing something that was bigger than he was or for that matter Mek was. “I was never a sailor. My ears made me an ill omen for any privateer ship heading out,” he said, interrupting Thysl. “But I know my way around a boat and can pull a rope or mend a sail a sight better than most bandy-legged sailors. Would there be a problem with Mek’s and my size?”
Jayf chuckled and said, “No, neither Mek’s considerable size nor your pointy ears will cause us ill.”
Chayse and Marley locked eyes, and he felt the weight of this strange man’s appraisal. After a moment, he nodded.
“We can fill you in as we go, but for now we need to move out before a stray nilmorg makes a right instead of a left turn and lands in our laps.”
Without further delay and intent on getting through Windy Cove, the party ghosted through the trees. Mek ranged out ahead. His ability to blend with his surroundings made him an amazing scout. Chayse slowed to match pace with the runesmith-come-bard, while the dragonkin spread out about the two.
His gaze flicked from Jayf to Thysl to Glyf and then back again. The closer he tried to watch them, the stranger it seemed that their small legs kept up to the pace Marley set. He finally said, “Proclaim my simple mind, but how are those three passing us by with a shorter stride?”
Something between a chortle and a grunt erupted from Marley. “Do not be so quick to name thyself. The dragonkin travel as only those with dragon’s blood can. What they do now is called running-the-edge. They are still on this plane, but travel as the wind along a path without resistance.”
Chayse shook his head. Niun taught him something of the different planes and living beneath Ymarii’s mountain, he knew somewhat of the Guardians. Although his guts squirmed when he thought of moving between the planes, he was also fascinated and wondered how many other tricks this little group had in their bags and what he had gotten himself and his friend into.